Black Cross (52 page)

“They do, yes. It’s a matter of biological selection. But I have already vouched for your children. The senior man at Steinhöring is a friend of my father.”

“I see.” Rachel thought for a moment. “What happens to these children after they reach the age of six?”

“Oh, they are adopted long before then. The demand far exceeds the supply.”

“The
demand
? Who demands them?”

“Why, good German families of course. Frequently families of childless SS officers.”

Rachel closed her eyes.

Schörner could not contain his excitement. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. It’s the perfect solution!”

“They would be raised as Nazis?”

Schörner looked put out. “As Germans, Rachel. Is that so terrible?”

“I would never see them again.”

A strange smile played over Schörner’s lips. “Children are not the only ones taken into the
Eindeutschung
program,
Liebling
.”

Rachel cringed at the intimate word. Her relationship with Schörner had been nothing like she’d expected. Rather than simply using her for sexual relief, he seemed intent on creating some grotesque parody of domesticity.

“What are you saying?” she asked, trying not to trust the glimmer of excitement she felt. “I could go with my children?”

Schörner’s smile disappeared. “That would not be possible. However, all is not lost. I shall be reassigned very soon. My parents are still alive in Cologne. I believe it might be possible for me to take you there and have you employed by them as a servant, as part of
Eindeutschung
.”

“But I am a Jew, Sturmbannführer.”

“Stop saying that! Papers are easily enough had, especially in the current situation. Do you want to survive or don’t you?”

Rachel stared at him in wonder. It was a measure of the gulf between them that Schörner could sit there and offer what he thought was salvation, while she saw only grief and pain. “Sturmbannführer, I do not consider life without my children worth living.”

Exasperation flared in Schörner’s voice. “They would be given the best of care in a
Lebensborn
home!”

“Until they were adopted by an SS family.”

“Of course!” He forced himself to calm down. “Listen . . . who knows? Perhaps after the war we — you — could locate the adopting parents and convince them to. . . ” Even Schörner fell silent at this ridiculous fantasy. “Rachel,” he said firmly, “my ability to protect your children at this point is negligible. You must decide soon. The alternative is—”

“What?”

“Must I say it? Brandt’s work here is nearly done. After that . . . I cannot tell you more.”

“I cannot decide this! I must have time to think.”

“But your children would
survive
. Isn’t that what you want?”

Yes!
cried a voice in her mind.
The war will be over before long, and the Nazis will lose. You could find them! You could tell every woman in the Circle what you are doing, so that after the war people would know you were telling the truth. Perhaps you could even mark the children in some way, give them a small scar to help prove they were yours after the war. They would probably have forgotten you, of course, and they might have changed a bit under the influence of SS parents, but
—

Rachel leapt to her feet. She was too torn even to make sense of her own thoughts. “Do you require anything further of me, Sturmbannführer?”

Schörner moved toward her, then stopped himself. “No. You may go. But think about what I told you. These are desperate times, Rachel. We must not close our minds to radical solutions.”

She stared at him for a long time. Then she turned, walked to the door, and knocked for Ariel Weitz.

Anna swept back her hair from the dampness at her neck. She was lying naked beneath the duvet she had brought to the cellar from upstairs. Two pale candles on the floor gave the only light. McConnell lay on his back, with her head in the crook of his arm.

“It will be dawn soon,” she said. “Maybe we should go up the hill. If Schörner catches Stern, we won’t get another chance to carry out the attack.”

McConnell pulled her closer. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“Because even if those bastards caught Stern — which they won’t — they couldn’t make him talk. Not in a week. That nut would slash his own throat with a broken bottle before he’d talk, just to spite them.”

She laughed softly in the darkness.

“Why don’t you try to sleep?” he said. “I’ll watch over you.”

“I cannot sleep,” she said. “The way this has all happened . . . you and me . . . the Wojiks being caught . . . what we must do tomorrow — I can’t force it out of my mind long enough to sleep. And it will all be over soon enough, in any case.”

McConnell turned and looked into her eyes. “Do you think Stern came here with orders to kill me?” he asked, giving voice to his suspicion for the first time. “If I was captured, I mean.”

Anna’s face grew somber. “I think he did, yes.”

“The cyanide capsule, right?”

“Yes. They always give one. Especially to someone like you, who is valuable because of what they know. I guess they were afraid you wouldn’t take the capsule if you were captured.”

He rose up on one elbow. “But I
was
captured, Anna. Last night. Stern told me not to tell you. The point is, he didn’t kill me. He could have — easily — but he didn’t. He killed two SS men instead.”

She stiffened. “The missing patrol? Stern killed them?”

“Yes.”

“
Ach
, where are the bodies?”

“The sewer in Dornow.”

“My God. Schörner is bound to find them before tomorrow night.”

McConnell took a deep breath. “Maybe. But it’s odd, isn’t it? About Stern disobeying his orders, I mean.”

“No. He likes you.”

McConnell laughed. “He doesn’t like me.”

“Perhaps ‘like’ is the wrong word. He respects you. You are something he can never be.”

“What’s that?”

“Innocent. Naive. Full of hope.” She pulled the duvet up to her chin. “American.”

“I don’t feel very naive. And I’ve got damn little hope, if you want to know the truth.”

Anna turned under the covers and pulled him close. “It’s mad anyway, you know. Why didn’t the Allies just bomb Totenhausen to rubble?”

“Because bombing it flat wouldn’t change anything in Himmler’s head.” Feeling the moist heat of her skin, he turned and rolled her on top of him. She shifted only slightly and he was inside again, looking up into her eyes.

“Who thought up this mission?” she asked, refusing to move.

“One of Churchill’s men.” McConnell put his hands on her thighs and tried to gently rock her.

She used her weight to stop him. “Churchill is behind this plan?”

“Ultimately, yes. I saw him. He gave me a note absolving me of guilt for the people who would die on this mission. Like he was the pope or something. Anna—”

She sat up and flattened her palms on his chest. He watched her abdominal muscles contract as she slid slowly forward and back, her eyes never leaving his face. “Do you know what I’m going to do if I get out?” she said.

“You
are
going to get out.”

“Well . . . if I do, I’m going to become a doctor. A children’s doctor. It’s the only way I could ever live with the things I have seen Brandt do to them.”

McConnell didn’t want to think about any of it. He pressed harder and watched her eyes as she moved above him. She seemed about to speak, but instead she leaned down and pushed her arms beneath his back, crushing her breasts between them. She buried her face in the hollow of his neck. She was physically very strong, he realized, strong enough that her arms around his back almost stopped his breathing as she clung fiercely to him. And as badly as he’d wanted her, he sensed an intensity in her that dwarfed his own. How had she survived this long? Living on a knife-edge between the mundane and madness, pretending to be unmoved by things that would sicken a coroner, holding her silence, praying for the day when she could somehow strike back?

Anna caught her breath and rose above him again, her nails digging into his arms. She had held back a great deal of herself upstairs. She had opened just enough to allow him in, offering herself as a refuge. And he had taken her. But now she had forgotten him — or at least the surface of him. What did she feel? he wondered. What did she see with her eyes shut tight and her face suffused with hot blood? The shade of Franz Perlman, the Jewish doctor murdered in Berlin? Or was she like some desperate swimmer in a dark ocean, glimpsing a faint and distant light that promised hope and life if only she could reach it? McConnell made himself believe that. That
he
was that light. That he could get her out of Germany alive. That he could get them both out. But when she cried out, her fingers tangled in his hair, her hips thrashing against his own, he heard only the anguished sound of someone whose light has disappeared.

“Raus!”
shouted a male voice.
“Raus! Get up!”

McConnell jerked awake and grabbed for his pistol. Anna had beaten him to it. She was sitting up with her breasts uncovered and the gun pointed straight at Jonas Stern’s chest.

“You think that’s funny?” she said.

“Put that thing down,” Stern snapped. “Get up and get dressed. It’s light outside.”

Her face went white. “Morning? What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. The cylinders are armed and buried by the dog kennels. They will detonate automatically at eight tonight.”

Anna threw off the covers and began pulling on her clothes. McConnell noticed that Stern didn’t look away while she did it.

“Wait,” he said.

She had her blouse on and was buttoning her skirt. “I can’t. I’m late already.”

“Anna . . . Christ, you can’t go back there.”

“She’s got to,” Stern said. “We settled this last night.”

“Bullshit.” McConnell stood up and pulled on his shorts, then took hold of Anna’s arm. “Schörner might be sitting there waiting for you. What the hell did he tell that Gestapo man last night when he arrived to question Wojik?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said, fastening a belt around her waist. “But if I don’t go, they’ll come for me here and you’ll both be killed. Besides, I’ve got to put the oxygen bottle in the E-Block.”

“Anna, that bottle won’t make enough difference to—”

“Please stop.” She took his hand. “Unless the worst has already happened, I’ll be back long before eight.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth. “I’ll be all right. Keep your head down today. You too, Herr Stern. I’m counting on you to get me out of this country.”

Stern looked from her to McConnell. “What is she talking about?”

Anna smiled at him, then hurried up the cellar stairs. She didn’t look back when she went through the door.

“What the hell was she talking about?” Stern asked again.

McConnell pulled on the gray trousers of his SS uniform. “I’m taking her out with me. You have a problem with that?”

Stern shrugged. “That’s between you and the Royal Navy, Doctor. Your wife might have something to say about it, though.”

“Go to hell.”

38

Anna knew something was wrong as soon as her bicycle coasted out of the heavy trees and onto the drive leading to Totenhausen’s main gate. Not only had the gate guard been doubled, but even with the pale winter sun lighting the hillside and the river, the men in the watchtowers were probing the shadows beneath the trees on the perimeter with their spotlights. When Anna stopped at the gate, the guards exchanged odd glances but did not detain her. Why should they? She was riding straight into the lion’s jaws.

She’d decided that if Major Schörner confronted her, her first line of defense would be that she had merely followed orders. He had asked her to clean the patient, not sit by him all night, and she had done that. She’d left the patient sleeping and in reasonably good shape. If pressed further, she would allow some anger to come through. After all, she was a civilian nurse, not an SS auxiliary. Medical research was one thing, torture another. Was it a crime to possess a weak stomach?

She turned left to pedal around the cinema annex. Activity in the camp seemed normal enough, except for the extra guards and the lights. She saw no sign of SS vehicles from Peenemünde. Perhaps Colonel Beck and his Gestapo torturer had already come and gone. Perhaps all was well after all. She held that thought until she rounded the corner of the cinema.

A naked woman was hanging from the Punishment Tree. Hanging by her hands, which had been tied behind her back so that when she was hoisted up her shoulders would be dislocated. The woman’s torso was bloody, her legs dark purple. For a moment Anna thought Sergeant Sturm had finally managed to kill Rachel Jansen, but as she pedaled on toward the hospital she saw that it was not Rachel. This woman had blond hair. It only appeared dark because of the matted blood.

“Please God, no,” Anna whispered, as she stopped at the hospital steps.

The dead woman was Greta Müller.

The young nurse’s hands were tied behind her back, and she swayed gently from the rope that held her to the bar. Anna knew she should not look too closely, but she could not look away. Someone had hung a large paper circle around Greta’s neck. A target. A target for a firing party. Most of the circle, and Greta’s chest, had been shot away.

Every instinct told Anna to run, to turn around and pedal out of the camp as fast as she could. But where could she run to? Schörner might be watching her at this very moment. She knew she should enter the hospital, but her legs had stopped moving. Greta’s body told a long and terrible story. The bruises showed where the questions had started. A series of burns traversed the length of her left arm. More serious queries. Ragged wounds on her thighs revealed that Sturm and his dogs had taken a turn before the end.

“Why Greta?” Anna asked, her voice almost a child’s whimper.

She looked across the Appellplatz. She knew that if she saw Schörner or Sturm or Brandt then, she would scream,
Why her, you stupid animals? I am the traitor! I am the spy
! She was actually speaking aloud when someone opened the hospital door and snarled, “Get inside, you stupid cow!”